Antarctic Science and Arts: Trio Performs in Russia as Part of Workshop

Above: USGS volunteer geoscientists and members of the Left Bank trio (left to right) Julianne Stafford, Alan Cooper, and Larry Schemel before performing for an Explorers Club meeting at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, May 20, 2011. [larger version]

Three U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) volunteer geoscientists—Alan Cooper (emeritus scientist, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center), Julianne Stafford (Volunteer for Science, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center), and Larry Schemel (emeritus scientist, USGS National Research Program in Water)—traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, in May 2012 to participate in a workshop on the Antarctic Seismic Data Library System for Cooperative Research (SDLS). The SDLS is an international collaborative project initiated and led by USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center scientists, now in its 21st year as part of the Antarctic Treaty system. The workshop focused on legacy Russian multichannel seismic data and their use in stratigraphic paleoclimate studies of the Antarctic continental margin and the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica.

As part of the workshop, the USGS scientists participated in a collaborative science and arts project by performing their trio’s (http://www.leftbanktrio.com/) multimedia presentation “Music of the Antarctic Expeditions from Captain Cook (1770’s) to the Antarctic Treaty (1959): Its Roles in Exploration, Science and Collaborations” (with text in Russian) at the Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg. They first performed this presentation in 2009 at the Antarctic Treaty Summit in Washington, D.C., recognizing 50 years of science (and arts) collaborations under the treaty (http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2010/02/meetings3.html). The presentation was later performed at the USGS campus in Menlo Park, California, and is planned for Antarctic science-arts events in conjunction with the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) Open Science Conference in July 2012 in Portland, Oregon (see http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2010/12/outreach.html).